175th SPICE Meeting at the Baltic Dynamics 2014 in Tartu, Estonia

Tartu, Estonia
17 – 19 Sep 2014

A SPICE Dinner on September 17, hosted by Janis Stabulnieks in the famous restaurant “Werner” (www.werner.ee) in Old Town Tartu, Estonia opened the 175th SPICE Meeting. Although best known for the bakery and cakes participants did not opt for the sweet side, but selected from the menu “Werner’s Soljanka” or other local delicacies. Werner’s opened in the actual location already in 1882 and became the “meeting place for “Estonia’s Elite” s well as students from the University of Tartu, founded 1632 by the Swedish King Gustav Adolf II. This environment was perfect for beginning talks at the Tartu SPICE Meeting.
After the conference was finished SPICE Group members met in the Sports Hall of the University of Life Sciences with 10 participants from four countries: Lithuania: Pranas Milius and Tomas Černevičius; from Latvia, Janis Stabulnieks and Ints Viksna; from Estonia Rein Ruubel, Martin Goroško, (partly)Vaido Mirkheim and Toomas Türk; from Germany Larisa Brovarska and Heinz Fiedler. The main topic of this meeting was
“SPICE 25.0”,
a concept for developing the network until and – more importantly after–- the 25th anniversary (in 2016). After a very brief summary of the discussion at earlier meetings regarding the “Future of SPICE (Riga and Berlin) topics raised were “SPICE Position Papers” to be prepared and presented / published as short summaries of statements regarding business incubation activities. For example, these papers could describe expectations incubator clients could / should have towards business incubators; the role of and relation between different types of incubators; or the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) that should be observed / published by business incubators. Ints Viksna and Rein Ruubel have committed to do first steps regarding the KPI matter (for example, collecting studies and reports on this matter, or finding tools and ways for collecting relevant data) and present first thoughts at the upcoming SPICE G & G Workshop in Berlin (December 2014). Another suggestion touched only very briefly was to support members of SPICE Group initiating local or regional sub-networks of SPICE Group (for example, like the SPICE BÄR Dinners in Berlin). Another initiative briefly touched was forming a team of “next generation” members of the SPICE network (possibly complemented by invited non-members) to discuss what “SPICE 25.0” should mean regarding the use of different / additional communication means, forms of collaboration, activities in the networks or new organizational approaches.
All network members are invited to contribute their ideas and comments to this discussion!


Host: BASTIC
Contact: Janis Stabulnieks send mail